Amazon Rolls Out Free Streaming Video for Prime Subscribers

If you subscribe to Amazon Prime, you’ve just gotten another goodie beyond cheap shipping: As of this morning, Prime subscribers have unlimited free access to a streaming library of about 5,000 movies and TV shows. If you don’t subscribe to Amazon Prime, the service costs $79 per year ($6.60/month) and allows for unlimited free two-day shipping and $3.99/item one-day shipping.

If you are already a paid Prime member, you can start watching now. If not, join the millions of people who area already members. Start your one month free trial of Amazon Prime now and begin enjoying the benefits of free two-day shipping and unlimited instant streaming of movies and TV shows today.

Happy viewing,

Jeff Bezos

Founder, Amazon.com

In its current incarnation, Prime free video is by no means a Netflix killer; according to Peter Kafka, Netflix’s instant video library, to which one can subscribe for $8/month, currently contains 20,000 titles, four times as many as Amazon’s. And students who participate in Amazon Student, which gives free Amazon Prime-like privileges to people currently enrolled in college, will not have access to the instant library (h/t Engadget). If you want to watch movies to watch movies, I’d still say go with Netflix; if you’d use the free two-day shipping enough for it to more or less pay for itself over the course of the year already and want some free Doctor Who thrown into the mix, than Amazon may be worth considering.